Musical Today Broadway has four new musicals this autumn, and one of them is sixty-six years late
The longest-running musical in the world has never played Broadway. That changes in October, which tells you something about how the autumn slate was assembled.
The four
Wanted opens at the James Earl Jones Theatre on 15 October, with Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Luke James and Ledisi. Galileo casts Tony nominee Raúl Esparza as the astronomer and begins previews at the Shubert Theatre on 10 November. The Fantasticks begins previews at the Hayes Theatre on 22 October and opens 16 November. Dolly: A True Original Musical starts previews at the St. James on 7 December and opens 19 January 2027.
The one that has been running since 1960
The Fantasticks ran off-Broadway for forty-two years and has never had a Broadway production. This one reimagines it as a gay love story, with Ruthie Ann Miles, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer and David Patrick Kelly.
The opening night that is a birthday
19 January 2027 is Dolly Parton's 81st. Opening nights are scheduled around critics and holidays; scheduling one around the subject's birthday is a decision about what the evening is for.
Four is the number to notice
Two originals and two revivals-by-another-name, against an autumn of new plays. A season that leans on plays is a season where producers are pricing risk carefully — musicals cost several times as much to put on and take longer to recoup.
Watch the gap between first preview and opening night, because it is the most honest signal a production gives about its own confidence. Three or four weeks is a show doing normal technical work; six or more is a show still being rewritten in front of paying audiences. On this slate The Fantasticks has about three and a half weeks, which reads as a settled production, while Dolly's six-week runway across the holidays is the standard shape for a bio-musical that wants to sell tickets through Christmas before the reviews land. If you are buying, previews are cheaper and the show is not finished; that is the trade, and on a musical with an out-of-town history it is a smaller gamble than it looks.
Source: Time Out New York checked against the source
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